Community Lounge, Introductions and General Discussion Discussion, Getting even with the oil companies in General Discussion; Read to the end. It's worth it.
This makes a lot of sense~ MAKE SURE YOU read to the end!!!
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Getting even with the oil companies

A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he goes to the grocery store he pays .60 cents a dozen. Since a dozen eggs won't last a week he normally buys two dozens at a time.

One day while buying eggs he notices that the price has risen to 72 cents. The next time he buys groceries, eggs are .76 cents a dozen. When asked to explain the price of eggs the store owner says, "the price has gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly".

This store buys 100 dozen eggs a day. I checked around for a better price and all the distributors have raised their prices. The distributors have begun to buy from the huge egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven out of business.

The huge egg farms sell 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors. With no competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The distributors then have to raise their prices to the grocery stores. And on and on and on. As the man kept buying eggs the price kept going up. He saw the big egg trucks delivering 100 dozen eggs each day. Nothing changed there.

He checked out the huge egg farms and found they were selling 100,000 dozen eggs to the distributors daily. Nothing had changed but the price of eggs.

Then week before Thanksgiving the price of eggs shot up to $1.00 a dozen. Again he asked the grocery owner why and was told, "cakes and baking for the holiday". The huge egg farmers know there will be a lot of baking going on and more eggs will be used. Hence, the price of eggs goes up. Expect the same thing at Christmas and other times when family cooking, baking, etc. happen.

This pattern continues until the price of eggs is 2.00 a dozen. The man says, "There must be something we can do about the price of eggs".

He starts talking to all the people in his town and they decide to stop buying eggs. This didn't work because everyone needed eggs. Finally, the man suggested only buying what you need.

He ate 2 eggs a day. On the way home from work he would stop at the grocery and buy two eggs. Everyone in town started buying 2 or 3 eggs a day.

The grocery store owner began complaining that he had too many eggs in his cooler. He told the distributor that he didn't need any eggs. Maybe wouldn't need any all week.

The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse. He told the huge egg farms that he didn't have any room for eggs would not need any for at least two weeks.

At the egg farm, the chickens just kept on laying eggs.

To relieve the pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that they could buy the eggs at a lower price. The distributor said, " I don't have the room for the %$&^*&% eggs even if they were free".

The distributor told the grocery store owner that he would lower the price of the eggs if the store would start buying again. The grocery store owner said, "I don't have room for more eggs. The customers are only buy 2 or 3 eggs at a time". "Now if you were to drop the price of eggs back down to the original price, the customers would start buying by the dozen again".

The distributors sent that proposal to the huge egg farmers. They liked the price they were getting for their eggs but, them chickens just kept on laying.

Finally, the egg farmers lowered the price of their eggs. But only a few cents. The customers still bought 2 or 3 eggs at a time. They said, "when the price of eggs gets down to where it was before, we will start buying by the dozen."

Slowly the price of eggs started dropping. The distributors had to slash their prices to make room for the eggs coming from the egg farmers. The egg farmers cut their prices because the distributors wouldn't buy at a higher price than they were selling eggs for.

Anyway, they had full warehouses and wouldn't need eggs for quite a while. And them chickens kept on laying. Eventually, the egg farmers cut their prices because they were throwing away eggs they couldn't sell. The distributors started buying again because the eggs were priced to where the stores could afford to sell them at the lower price.

And the customers starting buying by the dozen again.

Now, transpose this analogy to the gasoline industry.

What if everyone only bought $10.00 worth of gas each time they pulled to the pump. The dealers tanks would stay semi full all the time. The dealers wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the huge tank farms. The tank farms wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the refining plants. And the refining plants wouldn't have room for the oil being off loaded from the huge tankers coming from the Middle East.

Just $10.00 each time you buy gas. Don't fill it up. You may have to stop for gas twice a week but, the price should come down.

Think about it.

As an added note...When I buy $10.00 worth of gas, that leaves my tank a little under half full. The way prices are jumping around, you can buy gas for $2..65 a gallon and then the next morning it can be $2.15. If you have your tank full of $2.65 gas you don't have room for the $2.15 gas. You might not understand the economics of only buying two eggs at a time but, you can't buy cheaper gas if your tank is full of the high priced stuff..

Also, don't buy anything else at the gas station, don't give them any more of your hard earned money than what you spend on gas, until the prices come down.

Now think about it, if we all took the time to buy gas four or five times a week with our credit cards and speed passes rather than once, we could put a big hurt on their accounting systems.

Just for fun I'm going to do it like this for the next week or two. It makes a lot more sense than that one-day boycott idea that's been showing up in my e-mail for the past two years.

Re: Getting even with the oil companies

That's the most reasonable thing I've read in terms of dealing with fuel prices. I imagine if this was practiced wide spread it could have a positive effect. As it stands now, $10 would barely get me to 1/4 tank.

Re: Getting even with the oil companies

I had a similiar idea, but it's extremely difficult to get all the people to go along with it.
Many people have their undies all knotted up over EXXON's profits, and percieved gouging at the pump. If one could get all the people in America to NOT purchase Exxon gas for 1 month, just 30 days, Exxon would have way too much fuel to store. They then would lower their price. Then all the people who had been buying all of the other brands would flock back to Exxon, and all the other brands would have to lower their prices to get back customers.

Re: Getting even with the oil companies

That's exactly what I have been doing for the past year. I have never put more than $15 in my tank since gas became really expensive. Even if I have $6 lying around, I go get gas. $6 will get me about 28 miles in the Escalade, and 36 miles in the Seville. That should cover me driving to and from school for about 4 days. I don't drive too much during the week, so it works for me.

Re: Getting even with the oil companies

well, even under ideal circumstances, this wont work. You can use the analogy with eggs because there are only a few grocery stores per town vs. dozens of gas stations. Demand for gas is, I assume, higher than it is for eggs. Buying only 10 bux at a shot will only get you stopping for gas more often. Same thing with eggs, youll go to the store every day, and if the retailler is smart, youll get screwed even MORE cause they will mark up single eggs at a higher price than if you were to buy a dozen.
Its a neat thought, but the bottom line is that we Americans are an oil hungry lot, I drive a V8, I know how much gas costs.....to compensate, I dont eat eggs.

Re: Getting even with the oil companies

Originally Posted by Sandy

I had a similiar idea, but it's extremely difficult to get all the people to go along with it.
Many people have their undies all knotted up over EXXON's profits, and percieved gouging at the pump. If one could get all the people in America to NOT purchase Exxon gas for 1 month, just 30 days, Exxon would have way too much fuel to store. They then would lower their price. Then all the people who had been buying all of the other brands would flock back to Exxon, and all the other brands would have to lower their prices to get back customers.

Sandy, I respect all your posts. But I take umbrage with this one. You assume that America is the only place Exxon can sell their product. If we dont buy it, China gets it....or someone else will. They know we will end up buying it.

Re: Getting even with the oil companies

Being that I drive 100 miles a day I need to fill up two or three times a week with my daily commuting. However what if Exxon and Mobil stations were boycotted? Get the big boys to drop their prices first. No?

Re: Getting even with the oil companies

Ha...it costs me thirty bucks just to drive to and from school each day...I'm not going to stop 1.5 times each direction... Also, if will cost me a lot more in the long run, because for me to get TO a gas station, I have to drive a few miles each way...which means that I'm burning an extra gallon each time I don't fill up my 36 gallon tanks completely full.

Re: Getting even with the oil companies

The oil companies have us by the balls and they know it.

You hit the nail on the head.

Elvis, it sounds like a great plan and could work....but it's impossible. The oil companies can do what they want and we'd be forced to live with it. BUT, if oil companies raised prices to over $3.00-$3.50/ gallon, then there would be a national uprising and someone's head would be on the chopping block.

Re: Getting even with the oil companies

How about instead of putting serious pressure on our goverment representatives to get the price of gas down we make them GET OUR ASS off of needing so much oil and gas as primary fuel sources. "We" are a bunch of lazy funkers as a nation and if Big Oil gets the price of gas back down we will go back to being happy again and forget about the long term problems facing us. "Long term" is approx 15-25 years. We can be very slow to get moving on a particular problem, but when we do decide to dedicate ourselves to what may seem as overwhelming, and really apply the national will, we can accomplish some pretty amazing things. Just look at the race to the moon in the 60's. We went from almost nothing to having a man on the moon and returned safely in less than 10 years time, and did it with the technology of the day ! It was so unbelievable, some folks still do not believe we did it.

I say it's time to change, to move away from needing so much oil and discover and impliment alternatives before it's too late and we have to fight someone like China and / or India for whatever oil is left in 20 years. I'd rather to be able to tell them "just take this crap we don't need it anymore"

Re: Getting even with the oil companies

I agree with the skeptics. There will always be a market for gas - if not here, then somewhere else. The analogy is a good teaching tool if we're talking about products with similar market conditions - not the case here.
There is even a "thinking" community that says high prices are good for us, that they force us to act more responsibly with our natural resources. These same people are probably the worst complainers when they pay higher overall prices for daily necessities because of it

Re: Getting even with the oil companies

Originally Posted by Sandy

I had a similiar idea, but it's extremely difficult to get all the people to go along with it.
Many people have their undies all knotted up over EXXON's profits, and percieved gouging at the pump. If one could get all the people in America to NOT purchase Exxon gas for 1 month, just 30 days, Exxon would have way too much fuel to store. They then would lower their price. Then all the people who had been buying all of the other brands would flock back to Exxon, and all the other brands would have to lower their prices to get back customers.

If exxon can't sell to an exxon station, then Shell or BP will gladly buy that gas at their station. Which is exactly why a boycott won't work.

Gas prices would have to quadruple before I could justify the cost. Realistically I can't drive the damn scooter every day and in all kinds of weather. I'd be risking my life too, so I would only drive it on low traffic roads.

Using the same formula, I compared my previous vehicle (Honda Prelude) to my Expedition. I drive 10,000 miles a year. Considering that the Prelude demanded premium gas, the total additional cost is about $50 per month.